A Woman in Full | www.myajc.com

Lisa Cupid would have given Tom Wolfe fits.

Otherwise, this whole Braves-to-Cobb thing — this whole teeth-gnashing, sports-franchise-lusting, hyperventilated Betrayal in the ‘Burbs scenario — was just ripe for the stiletto-penned writer. It was he, you will recall, who so infamously skewered the go-go Atlanta of the ’90s in 742 ribald pages.

It almost makes you wish Cupid, the earnest, soft-voiced commissioner from south Cobb, hadn’t gummed up the works by being so all-fired sincere, so downright real and decent, in declining to go along with Tuesday night’s ratification of the Braves-Cobb hook-up.

Up to the moment when Cupid opened her mouth, it would have been all too easy for the master satirist to reduce the whole drama to one big, steaming heap of irony.

You had the other four Cobb commissioners, waxing all judicious and suffering through a whole hour of public comment, along with the phalanx of Braves execs in the front row.

+

Cobb County Chairman Tim Lee and commissioner Lisa Cupid listen to public speakers before the board voted 4-1 to approve the … read more

Meanwhile, you had the grizzled black pol from Fulton County, glad-handing in the back of the packed commission chambers and expressing only admiration for way the Cobb Chairman Tim Lee snatched the Braves from Fulton. Which prompted one Cobb booster to note astutely that Fulton and Atlanta “would love to see us stumble.”

And you just knew that somewhere, unseen, Kasim Reed was fuming. Because you had sensed all along that behind his clenched-teeth smiles and it’s-all-good nonchalance, Atlanta’s mayor has got to hate being jilted for these OTP home-wreckers.

Oh, Wolfe would have had a field day with the peanut gallery, the folks who trooped to the microphone to hail the deal as a godsend or excoriate it as the work of the devil.

He would have loved the young, ingratiating black preacher from the megachaurch just off the interstate, making little jokes about how he pastors everyone: the Democrats, who are mad at Republicans; the Republicans, who are mad at Democrats; and even a few tea partiers “who are mad a lot.”

And he would have adored the die-hard stadium opponents in the back of the room, scrawling hand-lettered signs (“Billionaire Care is the next Obamacare”) and uttering dark warnings about the rape of hardworking taxpayers and their constitutional freedoms.

via A Woman in Full | www.myajc.com.